Of Queues and Cures is one of the last and finest examples of the instrumental Canterbury sound on record during the 1970s. This somewhat sweeping claim for National Health's second album is made not only because of the complexity and quirkiness heard throughout, but because of the presence - quite rare in the years to follow - of fuzz organ, here played by Dave Stewart prior to his departure from the group and the return of the arguably jazzier and less fuzz-inclined Alan Gowen as sole keyboardist.

The Chaos Game is a mind-bending first full-length effort that deserves its place amongst analogs like Bubblemath, Knifeworld, Diablo Swing Orchestra, and Frank Zappa. Cabinets of Curiosity is a seven-piece ensemble comprised of vocalist Nat Hornyak, bassist Jared Hirst, guitarist Bran Blackmire, keyboardist Justin Jones (who's also in Tungsten, a Philadelphia-based prog metal band), lead guitarist/songwriter James Naprawa, flutist Kristina Bacich, and saxophonist Anthony Warga. They reasonably define their style as "Fragile-era Yes meets Kamelot" and "Frank Zappa meets Fiona Apple"; specifically, Naprawa says that they aim to "touch on what made the classic era of prog so magical," which means merging "super technical" moments in "insane time signatures" with "hummable" musicality.

"The Key" is the debut album from Norwegian progressive rock band Swifan Eolh & The Mudra Choir.
This album was executed by the whole band playing live in the studio, keeping the original bass and drum tracks, while later overdubbing vocals, guitars and keyboards. The songs often come to light in a process of combining ideas made by Tom Inge Andersen and Rune Seip Bjørnflaten and arranging them in companionship with the whole band. Each song seems to have a life of their own and is intuitively given their unique form. Lyrics are written by Rune Seip Bjørnflaten. The texts are expressions of a spiritually seeking attitude, finding inspiration in the esoteric traditions, addressing the labyrinths of the mind, still pointing out keys to freedom from the abyss of suffering.

Queen were straining at the boundaries of hard rock and heavy metal on Sheer Heart Attack, but they broke down all the barricades on A Night at the Opera, a self-consciously ridiculous and overblown hard rock masterpiece. Using the multi-layered guitars of its predecessor as a foundation, A Night at the Opera encompasses metal ("Death on Two Legs," "Sweet Lady"), pop (the lovely, shimmering "You're My Best Friend"), campy British music hall ("Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon," "Seaside Rendezvous"), and mystical prog rock ("'39," "The Prophet's Song"), eventually bringing it all together on the pseudo-operatic "Bohemian Rhapsody."

Mixing cold, mechanical instrumentation with the sizzle of keyboards, FM played an irregular style of progressive music that sounded isolated and pleasantly hollow. Even the warmth of Cameron Hawkins voice can't take away the harshness in the sound, which is why this album portrays mood so effectively. "Phasors on Stun" sounds like it's sung from the blackness of space, with piercing laser blasts shooting through the body of the song. "Hours" is a stellar array of synth, drums, and "effects" that musically casts an image of time travel, while "Slaughter in Robot Village" uses glockenspiel, electric violins, and mandolin to illustrate a battle between gigantic metal beasts. Nash the Slash uses his voice and his violins to conjure up a science fiction motif that is convincing through all eight songs…

In every sense, A Day at the Races is an unapologetic sequel to A Night at the Opera, the 1975 breakthrough that established Queen as rock & roll royalty. The band never attempts to hide that the record is a sequel – the two albums boast the same variation on the same cover art, the titles are both taken from old Marx Brothers films and serve as counterpoints to each other. But even though the two albums look the same, they don't quite sound the same, A Day at the Races is a bit tighter than its predecessor, yet tighter doesn't necessarily mean better for a band as extravagant as Queen.

A French Zeuhl project Elephant Tok (Éléphant Tôk) have been founded originally as a saxophone / bass / drums-based trio by a drummer Daniel Jeand'heur (ex-One Shot, Pienza, B12 4tet etc. etc.). With getting massively influenced by 70s progressive rock combos like Weather Report, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Lifetime, and especially Magma they have launched their originally structured music full of improvisational riffs. Soon after that they changed their formation into septet with a great support of a rapper / comedian Sebastien "Onan" Morin…

With the possible exception of Richard Pinhas' Heldon, Gilbert Artman's Lard Free was probably the premier French progressive group of the '70s. The prolific Heldon might win in terms of amount of material, but the three near-perfect albums by Lard Free (despite the truly wretched band name) probably have them beat in terms of overall quality. Although Artman, a drummer who also dabbles in synthesizers and piano, called Lard Free a group, he was the only constant member; all three albums have different lineups. 1973's Lard Free consists of relatively short pieces with prominent piano and saxophone parts, and as such is the most jazz-oriented of the three. The following year's I'm Around About Midnight consists of three long pieces with much more synthesizer; at times, it sounds almost like early (pre-ambient) Tangerine Dream, or perhaps Clear Light, the French collective Artman and the then-current lineup of Lard Free occasionally worked with around this time. 1977's Lard Free III, also known as Spirale Malax, is Artman's best work, a pair of side-long experiments that combine space music, jazz, and King Crimson-style heavy progressive rock better than many groups (including King Crimson) could ever hope to manage.

Down And Out In Paris And London is not only a very fine studio work, but also probably their most inspired since the terrific A Place In The Queue. There were some radical line up changes that made a bit aware of it too. After all Andy Tillson dropped all the swedish connections now, at least the phisical ones. Gone are the members or ex members of the Flower Kings replaced by an all english line up. Now with Paul Burguess (Camel, Jetrho Tull, 10cc) on drums and Jonathan Barrett (from Tillson´s other project Parallel Or 90 Degrees) on bass and without a lead guitarrist (a good thing, since their last guitar player did not fit well at all). But stylistic speaking, their sound remains as close to TFK as ever…

Stormy Six from Milan, Italy was one of the original bands in the RIO movement and appeared in the famous on March 12th 1978 in the New London Theatre in London. However, as opposed to the other bands appearing with them, they did not start out their musical career as a RIO sounding band…

Melodic-yet-progressive rock act The Room (who hail from the Southeast of the United Kingdom) have announced details of their third studio album 'Caught By The Machine'. This information follows their recent signing announcement with White Star Records, along with the launching of the first video single taken from the album - the upbeat and melodic pop-prog track 'Broken'. The sextet's third full-length 'Caught By The Machine' will be released in full on 22nd February 2019 via White Star Records.

Melodic-yet-progressive rock act The Room (who hail from the Southeast of the United Kingdom) have divulged further details of their third studio album “Caught by the Machine”. Along with unveiling the tracklist, artwork and pre-order links, The Room have released a brand new single, “The Golden Ones”.

The fourth Sky album - Sky 4 Forthcoming - was released in March 1982. This was Sky's first album to feature no original material. It consisted predominantly of arrangements of classical compositions (with the exception of a version of Hoagy Carmichael's "Skylark" and a band-composed variation on Adam de la Halle's ballet score for "My Giselle") and was marketed under the slogan "Genius Past, Genius Forthcoming". Music on the album included Sky treatments of pieces such as Berlioz's "March To The Scaffold" and Wagner's "Ride Of The Valkyries".

Sky 3 is the third album by English/Australian instrumental progressive rock band Sky, released in 1981. It reached number three in the British Albums chart. It was the first album recorded after Francis Monkman's departure from the group, with Steve Gray replacing him on keyboards.

Sky 2 is the second album by English/Australian instrumental progressive rock band Sky, released in 1980. Despite being a double album it reached number one in the British Album charts, and at the time was the fastest double album to receive platinum status in the UK, while the instrumental single "Toccata" peaked at 5 in the British Singles Chart. Francis Monkman played guitar on the 20-minute rock suite "FIFO" because, in his words, "I felt it necessary to inject a grunge element". "FIFO" stands for "First In, First Out", and is a song about computer processing. The track "Vivaldi", is Sky's own version of an earlier track by fellow progressive rock band Curved Air, of which Monkman was formerly a member. It originally appeared on their 1970 album "Air Conditioning".